


Take What You Can Get

by nicholas_de_vilance



Category: Ten Inch Hero
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, Gen, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:30:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicholas_de_vilance/pseuds/nicholas_de_vilance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Priestly invites the girls to his place to hang out.  Piper's stuck in class while he, Jen and Tish get high as a kite and talk about...stuff</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take What You Can Get

**Author's Note:**

> Written from start to finish while I rewatched the movie, so it's kind of rambly. Hope you like it ^_^

“Hey Priestly, are you a virgin?”

            A red double Mohawk rolled up as Priestly lifted his head from his critical examination of the tiny bit of water that always got left in the bottle when you finished drinking it.  He peered through the smoke in his living room at the offending voice.  It was Tish, go figure.

            “Define virgin,” he said.

            Jen started giggling, though it was combined with coughing because this was the first time she’d smoked anything, let alone pot.  She passed the joint back to Priestly and fell back into the crook of his arm.  The sounds she was making made Priestly grin and soon he was giggling too, poking her in the side for making fun of him.

            “I’ll take that as a yes,” Tish said.  She was a little less worse for wear, sticking strictly to beer because she didn’t like smoking.

            “Hey!”  Priestly snapped.  The toe of his combat boot stabbed playfully at her calf.

            Jen leaned her head back on his shoulder and hummed thoughtfully.  “What even is virginity?” she mused, voice soft, eyes closed.

            “Right?”  Priestly took a long drag and held it, brow furrowed.  He spoke on the exhale, smoke shooting from his mouth and nose.  “Virginity doesn’t mean shit, you know?  It’s just this social construct built around some archaic need of a man to exert his masculinity over a woman.  You it’s not something you have, you can’t lose it.  I mean, you don’t lose anything when you have sex.  It’s just…sex.”

            Shifting slightly, Jen looked up at him, eyes narrow.  “That was so deep,” she deadpanned then started giggling again.

            “Shut up,” he laughed, jostling her slightly.  “It’s true.  This is supposed to be the age of understanding and acceptance and we’re still hung up on this stupid misconception that the first sex you have is supposed to be a penis in a v—”

            Tish threw a pillow at him.  “Stop,” she said, grinning.

            “— _vagina_ and that there’s supposed to be this painful _breaking_ of the hymen and then, poof, suddenly you’re a mature adult.  And it’s bullshit.  Do you even know what the hymen is?”

            “Oh my god, why are we talking about this?” Jen groaned.  He eyes were closed; she looked like she was asleep except that she was talking.

            “Tish started it.”

            “I did not; I asked one simple question—”

            “You asked if I was a virgin, I’m answering you,” Priestly responded, still smiling.  He tossed her back the pillow she’d thrown at him so that she could put it back behind her head.  “Seriously, do you guys know that the hymen is not broken in sex?  That’s a crude misconception fed to teenage girls to keep their legs crossed.”

            “It is?”  Jen asked, looking at him in a squint.

            “How do you know so much about lady parts?”  Tish said.  He hadn’t noticed the slight drunken slur to her words until just then.

            “I have a bachelor’s degree in health and fitness,” he said before taking the last drag he could get off the joint.  “Basic sex-ed.”

            “Bullshit!”  Tish said, “You went to college?”

            “Three years…”

            “So wait,” Jen interrupted, “what’s the hymen, then?”

            Priestly looked down at her with a raised eyebrow.  He leaned over and flicked the stub of the joint into his ashtray.  “It’s like this elastic sort of membrane that…it only covers a part of the vaginal opening.  It doesn’t break when you shove something up there, I mean that’s ridiculous.  It…stretches…”

            “How come you’re not this smart when you’re sober?”  Tish moved on the couch until she was sprawled out over her pillow, looking down at where Priestly was laying on the floor with Jen.

            “It’s part of my charm,” he said.  “If I acted all smart around you guys, you’d start expecting it all the time.”

            Jen was still kind of in her own little world.  “My life makes so much more sense now…” she muttered into Priestly’s shirt.

            Priestly smiled at her and chuckled, deep in his throat.  He shifted to get more comfortable and rubbed a hand up and down her arm, as if he thought she needed soothing.  “You’re so far gone, Jenny.”

            “Am not,” she shot back, “and you still haven’t answered Tish’s question.”

            “What?”

            “Have you ever had sex,” Tish said, stressing the words.  She put a hand on Priestly’s chest and traced the words on his silly T-shirt.  It read “I’m with stupid” with an arrow pointing down.  She was definitely on a contact high right now.

            “Yes,” Priestly stated, concisely, to the point, with no clarification.

            “What kind?”

            “Sorry?”

            “You hear me.”

            Priestly looked at her with a furrowed brow.  “Yeah I did, what do you mean what kind?  You want a list?”

            Tish shifted and pulled her hair back away from her face before going back to tracing the words on his chest.  “If there is a list, sure,” she muttered.  “You don’t have to give me all the dirty details if you don’t want to.”

            “Yes he does,” Jen chimed in softly.

            All three of them laughed and that warm feeling between them got a little bit stronger.  It was nice, to be able to sit here with them, just laugh, not worried about judgment or tension because they were just good friends.  Priestly loved that, though he honestly felt Piper’s absence like a sudden chill.  Absently, he checked his watch to see if her night class was over yet.  It wasn’t.  He coughed for a moment, clearing his throat.

            “Okay,” he said, “I’ve had sex once.  In college, back when I lived in the dorms at…San Francisco State.  It was oral.  Mutual.  With…my roommate…”

            Tish’s hand stilled, palm flat on his chest as she looked him in the face.  “They have co-ed dorms up there?” she asked, still smiling.

            “Nope, not for freshmen,” he admitted, his ears turning as red as his hair.

            “So…”  Tish had this weird smile on her face, like he’d managed to genuinely surprise her.  “You had sex with a guy?”

            “Yup, so?”  The atmosphere was one between friends, and Priestly was pretty sure he could say he murdered Robert Downey Jr. right then and they wouldn’t even have batted an eye.  But he’d never told anyone about that before, so there were still the butterflies in his stomach, the want of acceptance and the hope that they wouldn’t freak out on him.

            “I thought you were straight,” she said simply.

            “Eh, straight, gay.  The only difference is the packaging.  I like all packaging,” he said with an easy smile.

            Once more, Jen proved that she was still with them.  “That’s actually kind of really hot, Priestly,” she muttered.

            Tish laughed and nodded.  “It is!” she agreed.

            “Pervs!  The both of you,” he accused, lighthearted.  “Jeez, get a little bit of illegal substance in you and your real, kinky natures come out full force.”

            Tish’s fingers had resumed the little tracing movements, getting all the way up to the tattoo on his neck.  She poked him and laughed, brushing her hair back again.  “I meant the whole…packaging thing.  It’s interesting.  A good metaphor.”

            “Really?”  Jen said, “because I meant that Priestly totally sucked a guy’s—”

            “That’s enough of that,” Priestly said, covering her mouth for a moment.  “You need to go to sleep, you closet vixen.”

            Jen smiled, eyes closed again.  “I love you, Priestly,” she muttered.

            “Love you too, Jenny-bean.”  The nickname sort of rolled off his tongue, but she let it slide.  He looked up to see that Tish had put her head down on her arm and closed her eyes, hand still resting on Priestly’s shoulder.  She might have been asleep, or just really baked.  He watched her for a little bit, thinking about how lucky he was that she was his friend.  He really was lucky—if he was more religious, he might even say blessed.  He had a job that he loved, great friends that cared about him, one of which was the most beautiful and interesting girl he’d ever known.  The only fly in paradise was that she would never…well, she’d never look at him that way.  So he left her hand on his shoulder and held onto Jen for support while he tried not to think about that fact that once tomorrow came Tish wouldn’t touch him like that again.

            Oh well, take what you can get, right?


End file.
